She's best known as a former winner of Strictly, the stunning Grimsby dancer who now has a starring role touring with Flashdance - the Musical.

But Joanne Clifton has revealed she is now looking to side-step into a new career - as an actress.

And Joanne says she'd relish a role on the nation's longest-running soap Coronation Street.

Joanne, who won Strictly in 2016, said: “I’m studying in TV acting - that’s on the side. While I'm on tour I may as well use my day time to study in other things and get as much knowledge as I can and as much training as I can."

And when asked what kind of roles she would like she replied: "I’m ready for anything!”

But asked by BBC Radio presenter David Burns on his breakfast show about what TV part she might like to play, Joanne plumped for a truly northern show set on the most famous Weatherfield cobbles.

She joked: “I think with my accent, I’m more suitable to Coronation Street than Eastenders but you never know - we’ll see what comes up.

“What I do like is shouting, in Flashdance I have some good arguments with Ben Adams on stage. We have a good shout at each other.

"I really like that so I’m hoping I get roles where I can shout!”

Joanne has also released a single from Flashdance called ‘Here and now’ - a duet with leading male Ben Adams.

Joanne said: “Listening to it, I just teared up because I still cant believe that actually my singing voice is on the radio.

“I actually did sing live on Strictly one year - it was the year when I had red hair so I can’t remember what year that was but we did a group dance for Remembrance day and I was actually singing live but they didn’t announce it so nobody knew, everyone thought I was just miming but it was me singing.

“I’ve sung live on TV but I have never really released a song before and it’s really weird because this is an original song, written for the show Flashdance so it’s not in the film and we just really loved singing it, myself and Ben.

“And we decided to record it, we released it here and now it’s like looking at the numbers, it’s gone quite big in America as well so we are quite chuffed really.”

Joanne Clifton in a scene from Flashdance

The song is available on streaming sites such as Spotify and iTunes and is one of several new songs written specially for the musical adaptation as Joanne explained: “Flashdance the musical is two hours and something long whereas the film is only one hour so it would’ve had to have been filled out a bit.

“So there are lots of original songs in there and other little storylines to fill out the musical so that’s one of them. It’s probably our favourite one.

“I don’t actually get to sing any of the main ones like ‘What a feeling’, or ‘Maniac’ or ‘Gloria’ or ‘I love rock n roll’ - I dance to some of those. I get to sing the ones that nobody knows!

“Everybody kind of knows me now obviously because that’s what I have done all my life and obviously I have been on Strictly - people know me as dancer but I have, say for the last three years now been singing because it’s something that I have always wanted to do - musical theatre.